In this dramatic portrait, Rodríguez-Díaz, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1955, has captured the dynamism of Chicana author Sandra Cisneros, one of this country’s premier Latina writers. The artist, who moved from Puerto Rico to San Antonio via New York, has chosen a large canvas and low viewpoint to give his subject heroic stature. He frequently paints portraits that depict his sitters in this unflinching, almost confrontational manner.

His work deals with issues in the Latin American community, specifically the complexity of balancing and participating simultaneously in two cultures. His work has been compared to that of Frida Kahlo and El Greco, because of its dark, yet magical essence. In regard to his explorations of identity through portraiture, the artist claims, “I am faced with the basic principle of who the person is. The contexts in which I place my subjects foreground their manner of being in the world.”

Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. Her poetry, short stories, and novels explore issues of feminism, poverty, religion, and oppression in American society. Her novel The House on Mango Street (1984), her book of poems entitled My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1987), and her collection of short stories called Woman Hollering Creek (1991) have won numerous awards and literary distinctions, among them the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and two NEA fellowships.